The only thing I know for sure

The only thing I know for sure, is that I know absolutely nothing.  But hell, 86% of the population doesn't know anything; 9 out of 17 people know this.  At least, I know that I know nothing.  Some people don't know they don't know anything.

I look around, I look around,
And I think, where have all the role-models gone?  Where have all the John Wayne's gone?

We're so concerned with our own crap.  We call them problems.  But they're just privileges.  I've seen real problems.  And I count my lucky stars that I have none.

Some say, ignorance is bliss.
But I say, ignorance is a way for the surreptitious to take that which they have not earned.

I'm reminded of when thieves were alleviated of their sinful appendages.  Now, I see a time where some need to steal just to survive.  Is that right?  Is anything we know ever been right?

I've read of when, each season,  Babylonian women sacrificed a man by burning him alive.  According to history, such practices were performed to appease the gods and yield good crops.  Apparently a matriarchal society is as ruthless as our traditional patriarchs.  Perhaps, more so.  In Africa, most of the females of each species are bigger than the males.  This is so the males don't eat the young.  Except, instead of an adult predator trimming the weak from the herd, mammoth females kill other matured adults and feed the spoils to their young.

Which is worse?
Does it matter?

I've read of a time, where, if you hurt, trimmed, or chopped down a tree (without permission from the gods), Pagans carved out your naval, nailed it the offended conifer, and forced you to circumnavigate the trunk until all your intestines firmly wrapped around the bark.  

Imagine if we lived back then.
There'd be no paper; among many other things.

Do I wish we still lived in a matriarchal society?
I don't know, I'm just glad we're not sacrificing people to phony-baloney gods in the hopes of a prolific harvest.

Do I wish we still lived in a time where defacing Mother Nature was a capitol offense? 
I don't know, but it would sure be great if we stopped ravaging our own natural resources in the name of progress.

What progress?
What have we really achieved in the last thirty years?  Century?

Most people seem so sure that the world will end any day now.  Y2K.  SARS.  12/21/12.  What a joke that was.  People, the Mayans never said that was when the Rapture would happen.  That's just when they stopped calendaring.  And the Mayan calendar was based on a ten-month-scale, not twelve; meaning the end-of-days would have happened well-before 12/21/12.

Still, we plod  on.
Now, pundits say that things in the Middle East are escalating just as things did back in August of 1914; right before WW1

Day-by-day, things get worse.
Zealots proclaim the impending return of the One True Savior.
Atheists say, "Naw, don't worry about.  Such is the way of things." 

Are we tottering on the precipice of Doomsday?
Or, will the night grow incipiently darker before a long-awaited dawn?

I don't know.
But at least, I know that I don't know.

And I thank God for that.